'X-Men Fantastic Four' #1 Preview: X-Men want to recruit Franklin Richards, but will his parents agree?
The X-Men have established a haven for themselves on the island nation of Krakoa, welcoming mutants from all across the world. It's a huge paradigm shift for the X-Men and for the state of mutants in the Marvel Universe, but there is one notable mutant who has not taken up Professor X's open invitation to the island: Franklin Richards.
The son of Reed Richards and Susan Storm of the Fantastic Four is an immensely powerful Omega level mutant, but whose reality-warping powers have recently been witnessing a decline. In the preview for the issue, Professor X notes that while the X-Men were content to let Franklin live with his parents, now that his Omega-level powers are falling into a decline, it's time to have Franklin join the rest of mutant kind on Krakoa. Convincing Reed Richards and Susan Storm to let their child go won't be an easy task, however, so Professor X has recruited Kitty Pryde. She'd connected with Franklin Richards once, a long time ago, and Professor X hopes to use that connection to help convince Franklin to come with them.
If things were that simple, of course, we wouldn't need a whole comic series for the event. In an interview with Newsarama, Chip Zdarsky said that "there are other forces at play here which will test both the FF and the X-Men, so ultimately this is a story about the two teams and their outlooks, not just about them fighting each other."
You can see the preview pages here, as well as an interview with the mini-series' artist, Terry Dodson.
'X-Men Fantastic Four' is written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Terry Dodson and inked by Rachel Dodson, with ink assistance by Dexter Vines & Karl Story, color art by Laura Martin, and lettering by VC's Joe Caramanga.
It releases February 5, wherever comics are sold.